US media in propaganda war with global anti-fracking activism

Derek Monroe is a writer/reporter and consultant based in Illinois, USA. He has reported on international and US foreign policy issues from Latin America, Poland, Japan, Iraq, Ukraine, Sri Lanka and India. His work appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, Alternet, Truthout and Ohmynews, and has been published in over 20 countries.

As 2014 comes to a close the American mainstream media has represented the most aggressive attack on global environmental movements that defend peoples’ right to live in healthy and clean environment worldwide.

The current attacks
against anti-fracking everywhere seem to be locked in step with
the growing pressure by the Obama administration on many
countries to join trade agreements such as the Trans Pacific
Partnership (TTP Americas-Asia) and the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership (TTIP US-EU), and the anti-environmental
rhetoric has been revved up to almost hysterical proportions.
This year has seen such "revelations" as: the Ecuador
vs. Chevron saga of international litigation that paints the
lawyers representing a population hurt by environmental and
economic devastation as swindlers and extortionists. Many
allegations presented in this year’s book by Paul Barrett
‘Law of the Jungle’ were verifiably true, however the
narrative concentrated only on one side of the legal fight while
Chevron's own violations of the law and ever changing games of
judicial jurisdictions were given a pass resulting in what became
a de-facto PR job for thecompany.

What has become interesting is the role of the mainstream US
media that until now appeared to be journalistically neutral on
the issue of big oil and big gas vs. the environmental movements.
Notably the sea change has played out by a mainstay of the US
news eco-system, National Public Radio (NPR). Not only has it
started to take sides by quoting very skewered and unverified
rumors in regards of the progress of the case in US courts, but
it also created a new media reporting narrative that trumps
everything done so far in the mainstream even by the standards of
corporate owned media.

NPR through its affiliated organization Chicago Public Media
(CPM) put together a compromised team for its program Planet
Money. Its original boss Adam Adamson was discovered taking money
from special interests with the permission and knowledge of CPM's
management and against its ethical guidelines. Meanwhile,
supposedly providing "truthful and unbiased" coverage of
business and finance. The team is now on a new beat of the oil
industry as it tries to expose an American audience to the world
of "hurt" that oil producers are now facing as the
price of oil hits a 4-year low. The alarmist
tone of some of its reports is compounded with the disconnect, as
it is opposite to the hardship regular Americans are now facing
due to stagnant wage growth, the increasing cost of living and
economic uncertainty wrought by ever increasing automation of the
workplace resulting in a more unstable and temporary character of
employment. However the all-time low has been reached by a New
York Times report by Andrew Higginson November 30, 2014:

The article "Russian money suspected behind fracking
protests" de-facto accuses Russia's Gazprom and Putin of
being behind the anti-fracking efforts in Romania. Higgins'
reporting is based on rumors and innuendos and is meant to
discredit the recent activist victory in Pungesti, Romania that
for now appears to have defeated a well-organized effort to frack
by US conglomerate Chevron. The story behind the reporting has a
little bit bigger context the author conveniently chooses to
ignore.

In December 2013, US State Department Assistant Secretary of
State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland gave a
speech saying that the US has invested over $5 billion in
democracy in neighboring Ukraine. However as the
"revolution" without revolutionary change progressed
into a civil war, the return on investment (ROI) for shareholders
remains to be seen. If the ROI was meant to be a civil war and
complete chaos then the US taxpayers would definitely be better
off to invest in Madoff's Ponzi scheme. However, if the investor
in the venture was the major sponsor of the conference where
Secretary Nuland gave her speech next to its logo, Chevron Corp,
the outcome is still largely to be determined. Chevron did its
investment homework as it saw the profit was worth the risk when
signing an agreement with the corrupt Yanukovich regime just a
few months before the conference it sponsored. From its vantage
point, the increased possibility of a political dividend by
cutting off Russia from its biggest market, Europe while
developing a fracking industry in Ukraine and other Eastern
European countries was a prize just too hard to pass up. It would
give them an illusion of energy independence as much as a foreign
owned fracking industry can provide while at the same time
developing export markets for US multinationals as the first US
export terminal comes online in 2015.

At the end of the day nobody asked Ukrainians at Maidan in Kiev
if this strategy of big chess on a small board would be worth
payment in 4000 plus lives and counting, not to mention the loss
of Crimea and the complete destruction of the Ukrainian economy.

The anti-fracking campaign of defamation and personal attacks has
a very predictable pattern and scenario. It has been a modus
operandi for the PR firms paid by ‘frackers’ and others
that go into rural communities about to be offered economic
benefits, and malign the opposing activists and people who
believe them as dupes. They are often characterized as naive and
gullible enough to be played by people from the "Coasts"
aka West and East coast urban centers.

Playing on deeply rooted American anti-intellectualism the
companies and PR machines tend to paint often well-educated
activists that back their arguments with science and evidence of
environmental degradation experienced elsewhere as snobs and
liberals that want the poor to stay poor.

In the industry's own
view, it offers an El Dorado of deliverance to the rural poor
while downplaying and often ignoring the effects of environmental
damage that in some cases would take virtually thousands of years
to reverse if they can ever be. In the new and improved version
of this MO, the global war on anti-fracking is now taking a
political page that is as personal and vicious as ever. While the
fracking goes global promising instant profits to the often
forgotten rural communities of Eastern Europe and elsewhere, the
allure of money is often too hard to resist. The fracking money
has power and on the political side it offers a mirage of energy
independence from Russia as a "new golden panacea of
everlasting prosperity and national independence.”

However the truth behind these efforts is as opaque as the
fracking chemical cocktail that is pumped into the ground.
"The accusation of Russian money is the lowest common
denominator of attack and it is used all the time against us and
others anytime we organize something against fracking," said
Pawel Zieminski, founder of the Polish organization ‘Faithful
to Sovereign Poland.’ Zieminski was involved along with
local residents in stopping Chevron's fracking at its facilities
in Zurawlow, eastern Poland. "Of course we don't take money
from Russia; it is all DIY while the other side employs the best
PR in Poland money can buy. They are even involved in using
Polish law to attack local residents who don't want fracking by
using the legal equivalent of Eminent Domain to move people from
their land against their will."

Opportunistically the argument of Russian money in context of a
long and difficult history of Eastern Europe under Soviet
domination is often used as a weapon of emotional appeal to
discredit the opposite side when the evidence and logic behind
the validity of counter arguments is lacking substance, as the
case with fracking often happens to be. However, the idea of a
foreign money threat to fracking is not only limited to Gazprom
and Russia. During my last summer's visit to New Brunswick and
Nova Scotia on Canada's Atlantic coast I have met activists who
told me that the wedge between them and the local population is
often attempted early on by the companies that paint them as
agents of US-based environmental organizations. Again the money
element is referred to as tool of the lowest type which in itself
is ironic considering the ability to raise funds by
multinationals and often Wall St-backed ‘frackers’ vs. the
activists is just not comparable.

Since I found Mr. Higgins piece very interesting in what it said
and didn't at the same time, I contacted the New York Times for
evidence that would lead Higgins to look for the anti-fracking
smoking AK-47 that never was. The reply I received is as follows:

"The article lays out what I know- and don't know. Nothing to
add." Well said, indeed.

Derek Monroe for
RT

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.